Friday, 9 May 2014

Always catching up, never there on time - Part one

May
already?

We have been busy busy busy for like forever and now we are
coming back down to normal.I have been
preparing two presentations simultaneously for my science group and then we
had family staying up to Easter. The weather then became such that we were
obliged to do something about the jungle that once was our garden. All the bad
weather we had been getting before, whilst it was just the job for weeds, it
was not the kind that encourages you into the outside without 'great big
waterproof coats and hats on' and wellies etc, to misquote A. A. Milne.

In early April we took a walk around Oxford, the idea stemmed
from my science interest U3A group.Someone decided it would be a nice idea to look at each of the famous
names that were associated with some of Oxford’s many colleges.

One of the typically small streets you encounter close to the older colleges in Oxford

We each had a person to study and planned a
walk which would take us past the many plaques that are found where something
important happened or someone lived or studied.
We took the bus which is free, with our bus passes, and which gets to Oxford
in about fifty minutes to an hour. It took us through a number of roads that we do not use if heading that way by car, but which were often the only roads pre-bypass days. The
first detour took me right into the main gate of the Royal Military College of
Science, the college I used to teach at. I recalled seeing a bus there
and had not taken too much notice, but this time I was interested because of a
touch of nostalgia. I have been retired for some years and had not been
inside the college since I left.

Once at Oxford we headed for the rendezvous point and looked for other
members of the U3A.

Oxford is an ancient place with many
buildings from different eras.It also
has one of the best bookshops in the world, namely Blackwell’s.If you are familiar with Terry Pratchett’s
concept of ‘L’ space, Blackwell’s is a very good example.For those not aware of Mr Pratchett’s
scientific breakthrough, it is as follows.When a large enough quantity of books are collected together in one
place, the presence of so much information distorts space and creates a new
kind of space, which he has dubbed L-space.Wherever L-space exists, such as inside small second hand bookshops or
places like Blackwell’s, the interior becomes larger than the exterior. You
can find this effect in many small looking second hand bookshops throughout the
world, where the amount of books inside the seemingly small shop is much larger
than the outside suggests.

Queens College Oxford

Oxford, land of the bicycle

Our day in Oxford was warm and dry, the kind of weather we
had not seen for some time. Walking around the town we systematically went from
plaque to plaque looking at the colleges and houses where notable people had
lived, worked or studied.One place which
was interesting was where the old Jewish graveyard had been. This had been
destroyed and built over many centuries ago and now has a plaque in both
English and Yiddish telling the story of how this came about and how it is now
restored as a monument.

My particular personage was sir Edmund Halley, the man who
first discovered that some comets were periodic and successfully predicted the
return of what has now become known as Halley’s Comet.He studied at Queens College Oxford and
lived in a small house nearby when he became a Savilian Professor of
Geometry.Geometry meant Maths at the
time and he had the necessary skills.It
had required complex calculations to predict the return of his comet.

Sir Edmund Halley's house

Although I have lived close to Oxford for many years, the
walk took me places I had not seen before and I discovered a number of nooks
and crannies that I had passed by previously.One new place was the grounds of the College of St Edmund, where a statue
of St Edmund of Abingdon has been placed, sitting on a stone seat.He taught at Oxford around 1200, but did not
get into theology until 1222.

St Edmund of Abingdon still studying hard

This stone commemorates the famous, or infamous depending on your point of view, debate with Charles Darwin on the Origin of Species. The stone stands outside the natural History Museum where the debate took place in 1860.

We finished up inside the Natural History Museum and then after a coffee and bun rest stop, wended our way back to the bus stop to catch the bus home.

***

A few days later, just before Easter, the family were staying with us and on a
really nice day, we all went to Buscot Park.

This is a house and grounds run by the National Trust, but lived in and
managed by the present Lord Faringdon.The grounds are impressive with walks and lakes, an ornamental stream
and formal gardens.It contains lots of
interesting places to see within the grounds and house and we spent all day
there.

Buscot House

Inside the grounds there is a large walled garden, with fruit trees and a variety of different flowers.

The walled garden

An espalier apple tree

Trees trained to grow against a wall are known as espaliers.

Against one wall on an out building we saw a masonary bee nest, with a cloud of bees coming and going around the entrance.

Around the grounds tthere are long walks on formal paths, stretching off in all directions.

A long ornamental pond with a waterfall leads down to the lake.

One of the inhabitants of the ornamental pond

Another tree lined path

One end of the lake

A gnarled tree

Chris' recent picture put me in mind of this tree.

There were lots of trees and shrubs in bloom

Strangest of all were the terracotta warriors which line one path. Unfortunately we were too early and they still had their frost protection on.

We were very lucky with the weather and walked ourselves to a standstill and still did not see everything.

Soon after that it was Easter and after Easter, we had more family
visiting and finally it was nearly May. To be continued...

3 comments:

Yes, your tree reminded me of my tree! Nice to see a bit more of Britain with which I am not too familiar. I have been to Oxford once but spent only part of one day there. There's still too much of Britain that I have never visited.

I love Oxford, and would to go back one day. Got too caught up in shopping and missed many of the sights. Buscot Park looks especially lovely. Can't believe how far ahead of us your spring is. We have a long way to go yet!

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Happily married, retired. The name SNAFU was accidental, I got cross with Blogger because my name is so commonplace any variation I could think of was already in use. Computer systems do not do sarcasm and so it accepted my comment as my user name. I am not hiding my identity, my name is Pete Morris. Lifelong geek and technophile. Bookshelves in nearly every room of the house, from Blyton to Einstein. Spent most of my working life training adults in geeky stuff, from basic electrics to computer systems. My heroes are, amongst others, Richard Feynman, Freeman Dyson and Eric Laithwaite and if you don’t need to look them up in Wikipedia then you are my kind of geek. .